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Annhilation and the wonders of Antimatter
Introduction The definition of Annihilation is "total destruction" stemming from the latin root nihil (nothing) its litteral translation is "to make into nothing" which is interesting for what the process denotes. Annihilation is the process that occures when subatomic particles or any matter meets with its antiparticle or antimatter causing an explosion or a burst of energy. It is believed that every particle in this world has another which is its oppoisit (its antiparticle) and its quantom numbers will be opposite from that of the original so their sum would be zero. To understand Annihilation you must first understand the fundemental difference of matter and antimatter, paticles and anti particles. It is commonly believed that antimatter could be a souce of great amounts of energy in the future but this belief is highly overrated. Since the energy used to form antimatter particles is so much the reverse effect will not return even the energy used in the original process ie: conservation of energy because of the loss of energy in heat. Matter & Antimatter Matter is simple enough to understand as it is thaught to every child throughout their elementary, middle, and high school educations. It is everywhere and everything around us. Matter is the bricks used to build a house the grass that grows on the lawn the trees that give us air to breath even the air itself. Everything in existance around us (human beings) and every other life form on this planet is made up fundementally of matter. People are made of matter and all the animals on this planet and all the planets in our galaxy and as far as we know everything in the universe. We live in a world of matter and everything is made up of it although maybe in distant galaxies there could be places made up of antimatter as far as we know it doesnt exist and antimatter can only be made in labs. Matter and Antimatter can never coexist because at the moment one touches the other they will annihilate in a burst of energy, light, and heat. very small amounts of antimatter can cause large destruction; a single droplet could power new york city for a day. Here is an example of a Annhilation operator This is a schematic of the Antiproton Decelerator which is like an antiparticle factory consisted of a chain of several accelerators, each one performing one of the steps needed to produce antiparticles. These consist of the Antiproton Accumulator (AA), the PS, the Low Energy Antiproton Ring(LEAR), and the Antiproton Collector (AC). For more information go to the the antimatter factory 'History of Antimatter ' The point is that for over twenty years reputable scientists have tried to open a debate on the very serious military implications of the antimatter research carried out at CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics) and at similar laboratories around the world. This has led to a whole series of technical-level publications, mostly in scientific journals, as well as to a number of papers in leading journals such as The New York Times (Huge production of antimatter planned, 27 August 1985, p. C1 and C3) and Nature (Antimatter underestimated, 26 February 1987, p. 754), which however have received very little attention. Concerning Dan Brown's book, Angles and Demons, as well as CERN's reply to it, there are numerous (technical and political) mistakes in both. In particular, the most important technical mistake is to suggest that large quantities of antimatter are needed to make a very powerful bomb: this is wrong, tiny amounts of antiprotons are sufficient to initiate huge thermonuclear explosions. Indeed, on the order of one microgram of antiprotons (or anti-hydrogen) is enough to trigger a multi-ton or multi-kiloton thermonuclear explosion. Explosion due to annhilation, 'pure energy' that doesn't leave ash like a normal catastrophic explosion. At CERN, on the evening of the 17 to the 18 of July 1986, antimatter was captured in an electromagnetic trap for the first time in history. Due to the relatively precarious conditions of this first successful attempt, it was only possible to conserve the antiprotons for about ten minutes. This was, nevertheless, much longer than the Americans Bill Kells of Fermilab and Gerald Gabrielse of the University of Washington had hoped for. Some other American Scientists, this time coming from the Los Alamos military laboratory (where the atomic bomb was perfected during the Second World War), are also at work in Geneva. In a few months time, using many more resources and more sophisticated equipment, they also expect to capture and bottle antiprotons, but in much greater quantities. As the group from the University of Washington, strive to divulge the difference in mass between the proton and its antiparticle. But, they will also attempt a number of complex manipulations such as, the production of anti-hydrogen, the injection of antiprotons into super-fluid helium, the search for meta-stable states in ordinary matter, etc. Various crucial experiments that should, in the near future, help to determine whether or not antimatter could become a new source of nuclear energy for civilian and military applications. For the more delicate experiments, they could certainly bring their vintage 1987 or 1988 bottles of antimatter to Los Alamos. There, up in the peaceful mountains of New Mexico, they could perfect nuclear weapons free of radioactive fall-out, beam weapons projecting thermonuclear plasma jets, gamma- or X-ray lasers, or other still more secret weapons, all triggered by antimatter. In 2002 experiments managed to produce tens of thousands of anti-hydrogen atoms, a sufficient number to study this gas in its antimatter form. However, although "tens of thousands" may sound a lot, it's really a very small amount. You would need 10'000'000'000'000'000'000 times that amount to have enough anti-hydrogen gas to fill a toy balloon! If we could somehow store our daily production, it would take us 25'000'000 billion years to fill the balloon. The universe has only been around for 13.7 billion years... So the Angels and Demons scenario is pure fiction. The book leaves the reader under the impression that antimatter can be used to create massive amounts of energy with very little quantity. The fact is however that this is completely untrue and will never happen. First of all it takes a lot more energy to create very small fragments of antimatter than it could give back through annihilation. But the process is not without loss: today the loss is enormous, but even if we could make the process very efficient, we would still not have any net gain. The effects the book has had on the current time period are obvious. Other then giving most people their first introduction to antimatter; it has also brought a new but short lasted rise of interest on the scientific and military implications of the advancement in antimatter production. The general public may not be aware of antimatter production because most of its media coverage is usually in scientific press. However, antimatter is not anything “new” scientists have been studying it for nearly a hundred years.